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Free BSD questions

OK, so I've decided to install Free BSD and give it a go to start learning more advanced features.... Well, stuff I'm not sure of as of yet, to really start testing it out which helps with my next paper....

Ok, so far, I've got patching down pretty well.... Not sure how much I like the patching model of it as I think Linux has it here. (What the HELL is happening to upgradepkg like Slackware has? or even YAST with SUSE or something.... The patching as of yet isn't my favorite).

The Muttrc file isn't configuring Mutt at all it seems. I have the file and I know it works, as it's the same Muttrc I use on SUSE and Slackware. It just isn't picking it up.

I'm getting used to BSD init. Heh, when you come from SUSE and Sackware and Debian, it's weird, even though Slackware uses a similar approach, it's no where near the same thing but that's OK, I'm not affraid to learn. And I know BSD is NOT Linux, and has been here longer.

I'm using Free BSD 5.4 RELEASE. Which I must say is an improvement from the 4.X branch in hardware compatibility, as 4.X won't even load on the machine I'm using. so this is a good change from that.

I know me and like 8 other people are the only people here who actually use Free BSD, but the others who use it, do so more than I do. I put all my free time lately into helping out with docs and **** like that and making donations to Free BSD and Slackware, and doing other stuff with my Kernels.

I have these two books for Free BSD:

Free BSD Unleashed, Second edition.

The Complete Free BSD

Both are excellent and I highly recommend the, from the new user to the old ones. The complete book, is from when I bought "The Free BSD Power pack 4.0" so that's quite old, but usually in a Unix OS I can work my way around as long as I have a hint.

One thing that really has me wondering, is sound. This is a lot different from any OS I've used before. I didn't expect a CD to just play out of the box, hell Slackware doesn't even do that yet, but looking over my book, it seems it's quite the task getting sound going (If anyone from the Free BSD project reads this, guys, I'm not going to compare you to Linux everytime, but damn, take a lesson from ALSA and the Linux sound way.)

One thing where Free BSD has me smiling is obviously :

pkg_add -r

Linux could take a lesson from this. I even got Naim installed and running by typing this:

pkg_add -r naim

It grabbed it and all needed files, and installed it right over the net. I'm impressed. Naimisn't easy to find. Last night for fun I did it with KDE. It was done in 15 minutes.

Does anyone here use Free BSD and Mutt as their email program? Is there something I need to do to get it to work on here properly? And is there any tricks anyone knows for sound on Free BSD? I haven't used it much as a desktop, so the server side of things I don't need any help, just getting sound and Mutt working are my main goals as of right now. I've been looking over the FAQ and for 2 days I've been reading docs on freebsd.org but so far nothing to get it going YET (Lots of docs == lots of time).

X isn't to hard to configure, so I'm not worried about it.

Again if you have any tricks for sound so I can listen to MP3s and whatnot, and Muttrc, it's appreciated.

First off, I want to say I found FreeBSD not suitable for workstation yet; this is not where it shines.

I've downloaded 5.4, but haven't upgraded to it ( you're ahead of me.)

When I first started playing with FreeBSD I set it up to to do just that, play ..... workstation ( with GUI ) Snort, etc., but didn't play with Mutt ( downloaded and compiled the then current Firefox and Thunderbird as the versions available were not up-to-date. This seems to be common with the desktop apps).

It's been a while, so I don't remember specifics. The only thing I remember was not being able to get a color “ ls “ while in a Gnomb shell ( did away with a gui on that machine anyway when I turned it into a server ).

For the sound, found the answer in the FreeBSD Handbook , chapter 7.2, Setting up the sound card.

Hope this helps.

" And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be" --Miguel Cervantes

Love FreeBSD for servers.
Running one with qmail (using the qmailrocks.org installation)
Our web server Apache 1.33 is on the other.
1. Assumming you use the entire disk; do not use the "suggested partitions" make a reasonable swap file and then make / the only other partition. The /var partition is too small and /usr too large in the suggested partition scheme.
2. Install a minimal system with Linux compatibility and the ports collection.
3. After reboot go to /usr/ports/lang/ perl5.8 and make it. Everything and its brother needs perl.
4 Then make everything else you need.

Originally posted here by netman4ttm Love FreeBSD for servers.
Running one with qmail (using the qmailrocks.org installation)
Our web server Apache 1.33 is on the other.
1. Assumming you use the entire disk; do not use the "suggested partitions" make a reasonable swap file and then make / the only other partition. The /var partition is too small and /usr too large in the suggested partition scheme.
2. Install a minimal system with Linux compatibility and the ports collection.
3. After reboot go to /usr/ports/lang/ perl5.8 and make it. Everything and its brother needs perl.
4 Then make everything else you need.

What did all this have to do with sound?

I wrote tutorials for installing Free BSD, I know how to do all fo this, the questions were about sound and how it should be changed.